Man, having broken
the harmony of life and brought about a descending cycle, has made himself
blind to the oneness of all things. It has been markedly so in that very
mundane function of life - eating. Mediaeval ascetic despised food and would-be
aesthetes; ascetics of our modern day have affected to follow their example,
though they do not know how to fast as the others did.

What has this
modern age not made of meals, from the extreme of banquets of many courses,
with dishes concocted to tempt surfeited gourmands, to the other extreme of
nothing to eat, when the mother, for example, alone at home, says, “I can’t be
bothered to make a meal for myself with no one else here to cook for.” Dinners
are made functions for “entertaining” people who exchange small talk, useless
when not injurious to the reputations of others. In the family, its members
bicker and squabble around the table. How many students of Theosophy, even,
comprehend the part of food in life, and why the preparation of a meal has been
termed a sacred function? Yet hints as to why are multiplied in the teachings,
whether in the Laws of Manu or the Bhagavad-Gita, in the lore of
Pythagoras, in the writings of the Neo-Platonists, of Paracelsus, of H.P. Blavatsky,
or W.Q. Judge.

“And in the first
place, indeed, they endeavored to learn the indications of symmetry, of labour,
food, and repose. In the next place, with respect to the preparation of food,
they were nearly the first who attempted to employ themselves in it, and to
define the mode in which it should be performed.” (Life of Pythagoras,
Iamblichus.)

Food is necessary
to the body. In this regard at least its importance is being more and more
understood in the world at large, as witness the developments in the last
decade in those circles concerning themselves with “public health.” Nutrition
research in the various laboratories of the greatest American universities has
been giving out some facts which certainly approach what has been known for
ages in occultism about the relation of food to well-being, the influence of
thought and feeling on assimilation, the close link between sunshine and
“vitamins.” It is even approaching the fringe of the mystery of the path to
rebirth in its investigations of what was once designated Vitamin A, now
assorted into Vitamins A, D, and E, with various functions to perform in the
human organism, the last bound up with sterility.

Terms may vary from
age to age but the underlying ideas remain ever the same, truth being
consistent and eternal:

“No one who does
not eat has strength to do works of holiness, strength to do works of
husbandry, strength to beget children. By eating every material creature lives,
by not eating it dies away.” (Zend Avesta, Vendidad - Sacred Books of the
East.)

Man’s body is
composed of mineral, vegetable, and animal substances which borrowed from the
three kingdoms below him and are returned to them. [1] From that food,
eaten and transmuted, are the organs materially formed. They are composed of
different kinds of elemental lives, all having their relations to different
parts of nature. [2]

“Man was considered
a macrocosm, and every element in him (writes James Darmesteter in a footnote,
p.187, Vendidad, Sacred Books of the East) was supposed to come from a
similar element in nature. Why does man want to eat, to drink and to
breathe, but because he is related to the elements of the earth, water and air,
and must attract these things to his constitution?” (Life of Paracelsus, Franz Hartmann.)

A two-fold reason
is already evident for the eating of food. By it man builds up his body but
also he affects the elemental lives that he takes in to send out again, raised
or degraded:

Man alone is not
the sole concern in this function of life, though our ahamkaric tendency has
made us think only of the benefit to ourselves by the taking of food, which
builds the various elements into the different organs. There is a benefit to
the body, yes; but there should also be a benefit to the elemental lives which
thus make entry. All too little is it heeded that as we eat we are affecting
those lives, and even by the very manner in which meals are taken.

Some measure of our
responsibility to the elemental lives is indicated in that twelfth chapter of
the Laws of Manu, so much misunderstood by the Orientalists, who have
confused “the whole system of transmigrations” with the reincarnation of the
Ego. The two-fold purpose of taking food is brought out by Iamblichus when
Anebo writes:

“…. The Demiurgos
does not by any means set food abundant and in reach for all living things in
the earth and sea but has implanted want of the same in the races superior to
us. Nor has he furnished to the other living things a natural abundance of the
necessaries of life. But to the demons he gives food of a quality adapted to
their nature, which is contributed by us human beings. Hence, if we, through
laziness or some other pretext, as is likely, should neglect such
contributions, the bodies of the demons will be in want of food, and will
experience both privation and disorder.” (The Egyptian Mysteries)

Man does not eat
for himself alone, to paraphrase words attributed to a great sage. Another
factor is also ignored, which Paracelsus emphasizes together with the others
already cited:

“There is something
like a fire (energy) within ourselves which continually consumes our form, and
if we were to add nothing to our body to supply the waste caused by that
combustion, our form would soon die. We continually eat our own selves; we eat
our fingers, our heart, our brain, etc.; but in each morsel of food which we
eat, there is contained the material required to replace that which has been
consumed by that internal fire. Each part of our organism selects what it
needs, and that which is superfluous or useless is rejected. The Master in man,
who superintends the building up of the organism, supplies every organ with that
which it needs. We need not eat bones to cause our bones to grow, nor veins,
ligaments and brain, to have those things formed within us.” (Life of
Paracelsus,Franz Hartmann)

“It is the Master
in man who superintends the building up of the organism” - but how many of us
consider that Master in man when at meals?

Mr. Judge was once
asked a question on a quotation from the “Upanishads”. He replied that the self
does not exist by reason of food but in that state causing the body to
be visible and to act through the food used. The translation that caused the
obscurity he rephrases thus: “The self exists in close proximity to the heart
and causes the body to exist by reason of the food which it takes in for its
subsistence.” It means, he goes on to say, that if the self were not there, the
body would not exist, and that the self procures vital airs from the
food which the one life causes to be digested. [3]

“I enter the earth
supporting all livings things by my power, and I am that property of sap which
is taste, nourishing all the herbs and plants of the field. Becoming the
internal fire of the living, I associate with the upward and downward
breathing, and cause the four kinds of food to digest.”

Most food is eaten
heedlessly as to its higher nature. The Master in man - the spiritual power of
concentration - cannot, then, be there superintending this function of the
building up of the organism. When a meal proceeds along the lines of thoughtless
automatism, how can the elemental lives making sacrifice receive due benefit?
How can the self procure vital airs from the food which only the one life can
cause to be digested?

Our twentieth
century way of taking meals is therefore one more place for change and
betterment with those to whom Theosophy is first in life. They, indeed, can
“try and set up a habit in that material unit whereby we may as incarnated
beings know the self.”[4]

In proportion as
the unity of the One Life in all creatures is comprehended by those to whom
food may become sacrifice, the cycle rises.

Significant words
are italicised by H.P.B., in a quotation she makes from Homer’s Seventh
Odyssey:

“Our gods appear to
us when we offer them sacrifice … sitting themselves at our tables,
they partake of our festival meals. Whenever they meet on his travels a
solitary Phoenician, they serve to him as guides, and otherwise manifest
their presence. We can say that our piety approaches us to them as much
as crime and bloodshed unite the Cyclopes and the ferocious race of Giants.” (“Elementals”, reprinted in “Theosophy”
magazine, Vol. V, pages 407-408.)

To help the
smallest creature upon its upward way is the sacred duty of every student of
Theosophy. Food taken when the Master in man presides at a meal is one of the
means of serving the whole of Life.

“Nourish the Gods,”
says the third Gita, “that the Gods may nourish you. A thief is he who
enjoys what has been given unto him but offers not a portion unto them. Those
who dress their meat but for themselves eat the bread of sin being themselves
sin incarnate.” As we understand at each meal that food is indeed sacrifice,
due portion is offered to the gods, for the Master in man is there. The
manifold meaning of that much discussed sentence from the same discourse is
more apparent:

“Beings are
nourished by food, food is produced by rain, rain comes from sacrifice, and
sacrifice is performed by action.” (Bhagavad-Gita, Theosophy Co.
edition, p. 24.)

In man as in nature
it is the action which is sacrifice that makes to arise the Waters of Life
producing the food by which beings of all classes are nourished when the Sun
is there.

“Anon the gods
descend, and then they return to heaven” wrote Mr. Judge on one occasion.[5] Elsewhere, he points out
how in a descending cycle when the ideal family life becomes rare, learned and
great adepts retire to other spheres. But the case will begin to be reversed by
the action of one philanthropist who becomes unselfish and intelligent
enough to set an example. The way is paved for the advent of an ascending cycle
because the Akasha becomes affected by the impulse forcing itself gradually,
with accumulated interest and redoubled power, upon others. The noble example
becomes a precedent. And -“Gnanis bless the noble man.” [6]

“Knowing that under
the great cyclic laws which govern us periods arrive even in the worst of ages
when good examples of living imprinted on the astral light cause effects ever
increasing in intensity until at last the ‘gods’ before referred to begin in
distant spheres to feel the force of those good actions and to return again to
help mankind on the recurrence of a better age, he implores Arjuna to be the
very first to set the good example.”

“In such an age as
this, the ritualistic sacrifice of a different age which has indeed a magical
effect becomes a sacrifice to be performed by each man in his own nature
upon the altar of his own heart.” (W. Q. Judge, Notes on the Bhagavad-Gita.)